Richard Myers:Timeline
August 14, 1998: Richard Myers Becomes New NORAD Commander General Richard B. Myers takes over as commander in chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), commander in chief of the US Space Command, and commander of the Air Force Space Command. He replaces General Howell M. Estes III. AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND, 6/3/1998; AIR FORCE NEWS, 8/19/1998 Myers will serve in these positions until February 22, 2000, when he will be replaced by General Ralph E. Eberhart. FORCE NEWS, 2/22/2000 On 9/11, Myers will serve as the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2009, PP. 10 Entity Tags: North American Aerospace Defense Command, Richard B. Myers, Air Force Space Command, US Space Command Timeline Tags: US Military, Complete 911 Timeline Between August 15, 1998 and February 22, 2000: NORAD Radar System and Control Software Inadequate, Commander Finds At some point during his tenure as commander in chief of NORAD (see August 14, 1998), General Richard Myers expresses concerns about the adequacy of the radar system over the US, which NORAD shares with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in what is called the Joint Surveillance System. Myers will later tell the 9/11 Commission that NORAD is unable to “correlate” over 50 percent of the unknown radar tracks it picks up, either because it cannot launch an interceptor aircraft in time or because it cannot deal with the tracks appropriately. Some of them disappear from radar before NORAD can correlate them with the FAA. Myers makes Pentagon officials aware of the problem, telling them, “don’t think we’re providing 100 percent air sovereignty here… we’re looking outward, and a number of those tracks are never correlated.” He will recall that in connection with the internal radar issue, “I saw a letter I put out talking about a potential terrorist issue… that’s why you would want these radars up… it’s kind of a future issue.” According to Myers, there is talk about the future potential of a terrorist threat as a rationale for “trying to get people to address the FAA/Force radar funding issue in a more robust way.” Myers also finds NORAD’s command and control software inadequate. He will tell the 9/11 Commission that the “system was very old and was contracted to be replaced, but the contractor did not perform. The issue was how many tracks the system could handle at once; NORAD kept modifying the equipment to allow more inputs but it needed a new system.” However, Myers will also confirm to the 9/11 Commission that “from a technical radar standpoint, NORAD had pretty good coastal range, and that the activity on 9/11 was within the radar area that was accessible to NORAD.” COMMISSION, 2004; 9/11 COMMISSION, 6/9/2004 Entity Tags: Joint Surveillance System, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline 2000: Space Command Head Says US Needs ‘Space Superiority’ General Richard Myers, chief of Space Command, states: “The American military is built to dominate all phases and mediums of combat. We must acknowledge that our way of war requires superiority in all mediums of conflict, including space. Thus, we must plan for, and execute to win, space superiority.” OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS, 1/2001; YES MAGAZINE, 2001; FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, 4/2001 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: US Military 2001 2002 January 11, 2002: First Prisoners Transferred to Guantanamo Bay An aerial shot of Camp X-Ray. Public domain The US prison camp at Guantanamo receives its first 20 prisoners from the Afghan battlefield. 1/11/2002 The prisoners are flown on a C-141 Starlifter cargo plane, escorted during the final leg of the journey by a Navy assault helicopter and a naval patrol boat. The prisoners, hooded, shackled, wearing blackout goggles and orange jumpsuits, and possibly drugged, are escorted one by one off the plane by scores of Marines in full battle gear. They are interred in what reporter Charlie Savage will later call “kennel-like outdoor cages” in the makeshift containment facility dubbed Camp X-Ray. 1/11/2002; SAVAGE, 2007, PP. 142-143 Leaked Photos of Transfer Cause International Outcry - Pictures of prisoners being transferred in conditions clearly in violation of international law are later leaked, prompting an outcry. But rather than investigating the inhumane transfer, the Pentagon will begin investigating how the pictures were leaked. PRESS, 11/9/2002 Guantanamo Chosen to Keep Prisoners out of US Jurisdiction - The prisoners are sent to this base—leased by Cuba to the US—because it is on foreign territory and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of US law (see December 28, 2001). AND MAIL, 9/5/2002 It was once a coaling station used by the US Navy, and in recent years had been used by Coast Guard helicopters searching for drug runners and refugees trying to make it across the Florida Straits to US soil. In 1998, the Clinton administration had briefly considered and then rejected a plan to bring some prisoners from Kosovo to Guantanamo. Guantanamo was chosen as an interim prison for Afghanis who survived the uprising at Mazar-e Sharif prison (see 11:25 a.m. November 25, 2001) by an interagency working group (see Shortly Before September 23, 2001), who considered and rejected facilities in Germany and other European countries. Group leader Pierre-Richard Prosper will later recall: “We looked at our military bases in Europe and ruled that out because (a), we’d have to get approval from a European government, and (b), we’d have to deal with the European Court of Human Rights and we didn’t know how they’d react. We didn’t want to lose control over it and have it become a European process because it was on European soil. And so we kept looking around and around, and basically someone said, ‘What about Guantanamo?’” The base may well have not been the final choice of Prosper’s group; it was still researching a Clinton-era attempt to house Haitian and Cuban refugees there that had been challenged in court when Rumsfeld unilaterally made the decision to begin transferring prisoners to the naval base. 2007, PP. 143-144 No Geneva Convention Strictures Apply to 'Unlawful Combatants' - Rumsfeld, acting on the advice of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, publicly declares the detainees “unlawful combatants” and thereby not entitled to the rights of the Geneva Conventions. “Unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,” Rumsfeld says. Though, according to Rumsfeld, the government will “for the most part treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Conventions, to the extent they are appropriate.” 1/11/2002 There is no reason to feel sorry for these detainees, says Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He states, “These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines at the back of a C-17 to bring it down.” YORK TIMES, 6/21/2004 British Officials: 'Scandalous' - Senior British officials privately call the treatment of prisoners “scandalous,” and one calls the refusal to follow the Geneva Convention “not benchmarks of a civilized society.” 6/13/2002 Entity Tags: US Department of the Navy, United States, US Department of Defense, Pierre-Richard Prosper, Richard B. Myers, Clinton administration, Donald Rumsfeld, Charlie Savage, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Office of Legal Counsel, Geneva Conventions Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline, Civil Liberties January 18-25, 2002: President Bush Ignores Advice from Senior Cabinet and Military Officials, Decides Geneva Conventions Do Not Apply to Taliban Siding with the Pentagon and Justice Department against the State Department, President Bush declares the Geneva Conventions invalid with regard to conflicts with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Secretary of State Colin Powell urges Bush to reconsider, saying that while Geneva does not apply to al-Qaeda terrorists, making such a decision for the Taliban—the putative government of Afghanistan—is a different matter. Such a decision could put US troops at risk. Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs chairman General Richard B. Myers support Powell’s position. Yet another voice carries more weight with Bush: John Yoo, a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC—see October 23, 2001). Yoo says that Afghanistan is a “failed state” without a functional government, and Taliban fighters are not members of an army as such, but members of a “militant, terrorist-like group” (see January 9, 2002). White House counsel Alberto Gonzales agrees with Yoo in a January 25 memo, calling Yoo’s opinion “definitive.” The Gonzales memo concludes that the “new kind of war” Bush wants to fight should not be equated with Geneva’s “quaint” privileges granted to prisoners of war, or the “strict limitations” they impose on interrogations (see January 25, 2002). Military lawyers dispute the idea that Geneva limits interrogations to recitals of name, rank, and serial number, but their objections are ignored. For an OLC lawyer to override the judgment of senior Cabinet officials is unprecedented. OLC lawyers usually render opinions on questions that have already been deliberated by the legal staffs of the agencies involved. But, perhaps because OLC lawyers like Yoo give Bush the legal opinions he wants, Bush grants that agency the first and last say in matters such as these. “OLC was definitely running the show legally, and John Yoo in particular,” a former Pentagon lawyer will recall. “Even though he was quite young, he exercised disproportionate authority because of his personality and his strong opinions.” Yoo is also very close to senior officials in the office of the vice president and in the Pentagon’s legal office. (LAKELAND FL), 10/24/2004 Undermining, Cutting out Top Advisers - Cheney deliberately cuts out the president’s national security counsel, John Bellinger, because, as the Washington Post will later report, Cheney’s top adviser, David Addington, holds Bellinger in “open contempt” and does not trust him to adequately push for expanded presidential authority (see January 18-25, 2002). Cheney and his office will also move to exclude Secretary of State Colin Powell from the decision-making process, and, when the media learns of the decision, will manage to shift some of the blame onto Powell (see January 25, 2002). POST, 6/24/2007 Final Decision - Bush will make his formal final declaration three weeks later (see February 7, 2002). Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, US Department of Justice, Richard B. Myers, US Department of State, Taliban, Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, Alberto R. Gonzales, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Colin Powell, Al-Qaeda, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bellinger, George W. Bush, Geneva Conventions, David S. Addington Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties January 19, 2002: Rumsfeld Tells Military Head Myers Geneva Conventions Do Not Apply to Al-Qaeda and Taliban Defense Secretary Rumsfeld sends a memo to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers informing him that Bush has declared the Geneva Conventions invalid with regard to conflicts with al-Qaeda and the Taliban (see January 18-25, 2002). In this “Memorandum for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Rumsfeld states: “The United States has determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” Nevertheless, “the Combatant Commanders shall, in detaining al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense, treat them humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 1/19/2002 The same day, the memorandum is disseminated as an order by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, 1/19/2002 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives January 25, 2002: Gonzales Recommends Retaining Decision to Declare War on Terror Exempt from Geneva Conventions White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales completes a draft memorandum to the president advising him not to reconsider his decision (see January 18-25, 2002) declaring Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters ineligible for prisoner of war status as Colin Powell has apparently recommended. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 1/25/2004 ; NEWSWEEK, 5/24/2004 The memo recommends that President Bush accept a recent Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo saying that the president has the authority to set aside the Geneva Conventions as the basis of his policy (see January 9, 2002). 2007, PP. 146 Geneva No Longer Applies, Says Gonzales - Gonzales writes to Bush that Powell “has asked that you conclude that GPW Geneva Convention does apply to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I understand, however, that he would agree that al-Qaeda and the Taliban fighters could be determined not to be prisoners of war (POWs) but only on a case-by-case basis following individual hearings before a military board.” Powell believes that US troops will be put at risk if the US renounces the Geneva Conventions in relation to the Taliban. Rumsfeld and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, allegedly agree with Powell’s argument. YORK TIMES, 10/24/2004 But Gonzales says that he agrees with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which has determined that the president had the authority to make this declaration on the premise that “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war” and “not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for GPW Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.” Gonzales thus states, “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.” 5/24/2004 Gonzales also says that by declaring the war in Afghanistan exempt from the Geneva Conventions, the president would “substantially reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act 1996” (see August 21, 1996). The president and other officials in the administration would then be protected from any future “prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges.” YORK TIMES, 5/21/2004; NEWSWEEK, 5/24/2004 Memo Actually Written by Cheney's Lawyer - Though the memo is released under Gonzales’s signature, many inside the White House do not believe the memo was written by him; it has an unorthodox format and a subtly mocking tone that does not go with Gonzales’s usual style. A White House lawyer with direct knowledge of the memo later says it was written by Cheney’s chief lawyer, David Addington. Deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan passed it to Gonzales, who signed it as “my judgment” and sent it to Bush. Addington’s memo quotes Bush’s own words: “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war.” POST, 6/24/2007 Powell 'Hits the Roof' over Memo - When Powell reads the memo (see January 26, 2002), he reportedly “hits the roof” and immediately arranges for a meeting with the president (see January 25, 2002). 5/24/2004 Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Office of Legal Counsel, Geneva Conventions, Alberto R. Gonzales, Colin Powell, David S. Addington, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties February 24, 2002: US General Visits Niger; Finds No Evidence that Uranium Could be Diverted to Iraq Carlton W. Fulford Jr. US Marine Corps Marine General Carlton W. Fulford Jr., deputy commander of the US European Command, arrives in Niger on a scheduled refueling stop. At the request of US Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, Fulford joins the ambassador at a meeting with Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja and Foreign Minister Aichatou Mindaoudou. He explains the importance of keeping Niger’s ore deposits secure. At the meeting, President Tandja assures the ambassador and General Fulford that Niger is determined to keep its uranium “in safe hands.” POST, 7/15/2003; VOICE OF AMERICA, 7/15/2003; VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 282; US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004 After the meeting, Fulford concludes that Niger’s uranium is securely under the control of a French consortium and that there is little risk that the material will end up in the wrong hands. These findings are passed on to General Joseph Ralston who provides them to General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. POST, 7/15/2003; VOICE OF AMERICA, 7/15/2003; VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 282 The Pentagon will later say that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was not informed about the trip or its conclusions. OF AMERICA, 7/15/2003 Entity Tags: Mamadou Tandja, Joseph Ralston, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, Richard B. Myers, Aichatou Mindaoudou, Carlton W. Fulford, US Department of Defense Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing March 10, 2002: Joint Chiefs Chairman Downplays Meaning of Secret ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ After the existence of the Defense Department’s new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) (see December 31, 2001) is leaked to the media, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, goes on CNN to claim that the document has little real meaning in an operational sense, but instead is just a policy document that outlines the general US deterrence strategies towards nations with weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons are just one part of that strategy, Myers says. Myers says that the document merely preserves the president’s options “in case this country or our friends and allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, biological, chemical, or for that matter high explosives.” He adds: “It’s been the policy of this country for a long time that the president would always reserve the right up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if that was appropriate. So that continues to be the policy.” 3/10/2002 Myers’ attempts to downplay the NPR are inaccurate, as it is a new operational policy that plans for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against countries attempting to create weapons of mass destruction, if the White House deems such strikes necessary. OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS, 11/5/2007 Entity Tags: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: US International Relations April 4, 2002: Head of US Military States ‘The Goal Has Never Been to Get bin Laden’ Myers making his comments at a press conference. Banded Artists Productions Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers states, “The goal has never been to get bin Laden.” He adds, “Obviously, that’s desirable,” but then he hints it won’t be desirable to do so soon, saying, “I just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in these organizations. You may have more effect by going after the middlemen, because they’re harder to replace. I don’t know if that’s true, or not, and clearly we would like to eventually get bin Laden.” NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS, 4/6/2002 In early 2005, the recently retired Executive Director of the CIA will explicitly state that it is better to let bin Laden remain free (see January 9, 2005). Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline August 15, 2002: US General Believes Troops Will Remain in Afghanistan for Long Time General Tommy Franks, commander of US troops in Central Asia, says, “It does not surprise me that someone would say, ‘Oh gosh, the military is going to be in Afghanistan for a long, long time.’ Sure we will be.” He likens the situation to South Korea, where the US has stationed troops for over 50 years. A few days earlier, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers said the war on terrorism “could last years and years.” NEWS, 8/16/2002 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Thomas Franks Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan October-November 2002: US Leaders Reassess Afghanistan War Map of Afghanistan, showing areas of control by various warlords and factions. ABC News In May 2002, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan declared that the war in Afghanistan would be over within weeks (see May 8, 2002). The perception amongst many in the US is that the war is over. However, it appears that US leaders begin to believe the war is going to last longer and be more difficult than previously believed. On October 8, the US ambassador says, “The war is certainly not over. Military operations are continuing, especially in the eastern part of the country and they will continue until we win.” Most of the country is controlled by warlords who are now being supplied with weapons and money by the US government. TELEGRAPH, 10/8/2002 On November 8, 2002, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers says of Afghanistan, “I think in a sense we’ve lost a little momentum there, to be frank. They’ve made lots of adaptations to our tactics, and we’ve got to continue to think and try to out-think them and to be faster at it.” POST, 11/8/2002 A few days after Myers’ remarks, Time magazine reports, “The fear of failure in Afghanistan has lately prompted some hard new thinking in both Washington and Kabul. General Myers’ candid remarks to the Brookings Institution suggests the Pentagon is trying to be more creative in its pursuit of stability in Afghanistan.” One strategy is to put more resources into reconstruction. 11/11/2002 Entity Tags: United States, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan October 25, 2002: Pentagon General Counsel ‘Short-Circuits’ Approval Process of Harsh Interrogation Request Shortly after the October 11, 2002, request by Guantanamo commander Major General Michael Dunlavey for approval of new, harsh interrogation techniques (see Torture of US Captives), and after Guantanamo legal counsel Diane Beaver submitted her analysis justifying the use of those techniques (see October 11, 2002), General James T. “Tom” Hill forwards everything to General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hill includes a letter that contains the sentence, “Our respective staffs, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Joint Task Force 170 Army unit in charge of interrogating Guantanamo detainees have been trying to identify counter-resistant techniques that we can lawfully employ.” In the letter, Hill is clearly ambivalent about the use of severe interrogation methods. He wants the opinion of senior Pentagon lawyers, and requests that “Department of Justice lawyers review the third category most severe of techniques.” But none of this happens. The Joint Chiefs should have subjected the request to a detailed legal review, including scrutiny by Myers’s own counsel, Jane Dalton, but instead, Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes short-circuits the approval process. Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recalls Dalton telling him: “Jim pulled this away. We never had a chance to complete the assessment.” Myers later recalls being troubled that the normal procedures had been circumvented. Looking at the “Haynes Memo,” Myers will point out, “You don’t see my initials on this.” He notes that he “discussed it,” but never signed off on it. “This was not the way this should have come about.” Myers will come to believe that there was “intrigue” going on “that I wasn’t aware of, and Jane wasn’t aware of, that was probably occurring between J. Haynes, White House general counsel Gonzales, and Justice.” Instead of going through the proper channels, the memo goes straight to Haynes, who merely signs off with a note that says, “Good to go.” FAIR, 5/2008 Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Alberto R. Gonzales, Alberto Mora, Diane E. Beaver, Michael E. Dunlavey, James T. Hill, Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J. Haynes, Richard B. Myers, Jane Dalton Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties October 25, 2002: General Sends Memo to Joint Chiefs’ Chairman Saying New Interrogation Methods Are Needed Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the Southern Command, sends a memo to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers providing him information on the new interrogation techniques that have been requested for use at Guantanamo (see October 11, 2002). He says that new methods are needed because, “despite our best efforts, some detainees have tenaciously resisted our current interrogation methods.” He says he thinks Categories I and II techniques are “legal and humane.” He only questions the legality of category three techniques, recommending additional legal advice from lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Hill writes: “I am particularly troubled by the use of implied or expressed threats of death of the detainee or his family. However, I desire to have as many options as possible at my disposal….” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 10/25/2002 Hill later says, “We weren’t sure in the beginning what we had; we’re not sure today what we have. There are still people who do not talk to us. We could have the keys to the kingdom and not know it.” YORK TIMES, 6/21/2004 Entity Tags: James T. Hill, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives November 27, 2002: Pentagon General Counsel Recommends Harsh Interrogation Tactics for Use at Guantanamo James T. Hill. Defense Department Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes sends Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld an “action memo” to approve a set of interrogation tactics for use. The techniques are to be used at the discretion of General James T. Hill, commander of the US Southern Command, and are those previously classified in Categories I and II, and the “mild, non-injurious contact” techniques from Category III that were suggested by the Guantanamo legal staff (see October 25, 2002). The mildest techniques, Category I, can be used by interrogators at will and include yelling and mild forms of deception. Category II techniques are to be approved by an “interrogator group director,” and include the use of stress positions for up to four hours; use of falsified documents; isolation of a detainee for up to thirty days; sensory deprivation and hooding; twenty-hour interrogations; removal of hygiene and religious items; enforced removal of clothing (stripping); forced grooming, including the shaving of beards; and playing on detainees’ phobias, such as a fear of dogs, to induce stress and break resistance. With regard to the remaining harsh techniques in Category III—physical contact, death threats, and use of wet towels (waterboarding)—Haynes writes that they “may be legally available but as a matter of policy, a blanket approval… is not warranted at this time.” Haynes mentions having discussed the matter with “the deputy, Doug Feith and General Myers,” who, he believes, join him in the recommendation. He adds, “Our armed forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” RIGHTS WATCH, 8/19/2004 Rumsfeld will sign the so-called “Haynes Memo” (see December 2, 2002), and add the following handwritten comment: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?” FAIR, 5/2008 Entity Tags: James T. Hill, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Richard B. Myers, William J. Haynes Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives January 10, 2003: Bush Orders Nuclear Weapons as Part of Planned Preemptive Military Strikes Global Strike logo. Federation of American Scientists President Bush signs a classified presidential directive that defines the “Global Strike” program, formalized as Contingency Plan 8022, or CONPLAN-8022, as US policy. Global Strike implements nuclear weapons as part of a possible US preemptive strike against envisioned enemies. In the order, Bush defines Global Strike as “a capability to deliver rapid, extended range, precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations) effects in support of theater and national objectives.” He orders that Global Strike be turned over to the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the entity in charge of deploying and using the nation’s nuclear arsenal, telling it to “be ready to strike at any moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.” A month later, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will tell the House Armed Services Committee, “With its Global Strike responsibilities, the Command will provide a core cadre to plan and execute nuclear, conventional, and information operations anywhere in the world.” 2008, PP. 179-180 The plan is not revealed until May 2005, when defense analyst William Arkin writes of the program for the Washington Post. POST, 5/15/2005 In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write: “Global Strike represented the next—some might say the ultimate—manifestation of this principle and isolationism, allowing for the possibility of purely unilateral military action. There was no need for allies and no need for nation building. Just as missile defense could protect us from having to engage the world, so Global Strike could allow the United States to dominate the world while standing utterly apart from it.” 2008, PP. 183 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, George W. Bush, ’Global Strike’, William Arkin, J. Peter Scoblic Timeline Tags: US International Relations February 5, 2003: Rumsfeld and Myers Intend to Use ‘Non-Lethal’ Chemical Agents against Iraqi Civilians US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, inform the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that they intend to seek permission from George Bush to use calmative agents (see February 12, 2001-March 30, 2001) against Iraqi civilians, in cave systems or to take prisoners. 2/6/2003; INDEPENDENT, 2/16/2003 Rumsfeld calls the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) a “straightjacket” SUN, 3/27/2003; GUARDIAN, 4/8/2003 and insists that “there are times when the use of non-lethal riot agents is perfectly appropriate.” 2/6/2003; CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 2/14/2003; GUARDIAN, 3/12/2003; GUARDIAN, 4/8/2003 Under the provisions of the CWC, military use of chemicals—including non-lethal gases like tear gas—is prohibited. The treaty only permits the use of non-lethal agents for law enforcement purposes. 2/6/2003; CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 2/14/2003 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: US Military, Iraq under US Occupation March 31, 2003: US Forces Overrun Supposed Militant ‘Poison Factory’ in Iraq, but Its Poison Capabilities Appear Overblown A Kurdish soldier allied with US forces stands on the site where the Sargat training camp used to be. He holds a piece of a US cruise missile that hit the camp. Scott Peterson / Getty Images US Special Forces working with local Kurdish forces overrun the small border region of Iraq controlled by the militant group Ansar al-Islam. This is where Secretary of State Colin Powell alleged militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had a ‘poison factory’ near the town of Khurmal where chemical weapons of mass destruction capable of killing thousands were made. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers says, “We think that’s probably where the ricin that was found in London probably came; at least the operatives and maybe some of the formulas came from this site.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld comments, “We’re not certain what we’ll find but we should know more in the next three days - three or four days.” YORK DAILY NEWS, 3/31/2003 In a 2007 book, CIA Director George Tenet will claim, “Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, al-Zarqawi’s camp in Khurmal was bombed by the US military. We obtained reliable human intelligence reporting and forensic samples confirming that poisons and toxins had been produced at the camp.” 2007, PP. 277-278 He will further claim that the camp “engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that al-Zarqawi’s men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked.” 2007, PP. 350 But Tenet’s claims seem wildly overblown compared to other subsequent news reports about what was found at the camp. In late April 2003, the Los Angeles Times will report that, “Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, along with interviews with US and Kurdish intelligence operatives, indicate al-Islam was partly funded and armed from abroad; was experimenting with chemicals, including toxic agents and a cyanide-based body lotion; and had international aspirations. But the documents, statements by imprisoned Ansar guerrillas, and visits to the group’s strongholds before and after the war produced no strong evidence of connections to Baghdad and indicated that Ansar was not a sophisticated terrorist organization. The group was a dedicated, but fledgling, al-Qaeda surrogate lacking the capability to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders.” A crude chemical laboratory is found in the village of Sargat, but no evidence of any sophisticated equipment is found. “Tests have revealed the presence of hydrogen cyanide and potassium cyanide, poisons normally used to kill rodents and other pests. The group, according to Kurdish officials, had been experimenting on animals with a cyanide-laced cream. Several jars of peach body lotion lay at the site beside chemicals and a few empty wooden birdcages.” While a lot of documentation is found showing intention to create chemical weapons, the actual capability appears to have been quite low. ANGELES TIMES, 4/27/2003 As the Christian Science Monitor will later conclude, the “‘poison factory’ proved primitive; nothing but substances commonly used to kill rodents were found there.” SCIENCE MONITOR, 10/16/2003 Journalist Jason Burke will also later comment, “As one of the first journalists to enter the al-Qaeda research facilities at the Darunta camp in eastern Afghanistan in 2001, I was struck by how crude they were. The Ansar al-Islam terrorist group’s alleged chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, which I inspected the day after its capture in 2003, was even more rudimentary.” POLICY, 5/2004 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, George J. Tenet, Colin Powell, Ansar al-Islam, Donald Rumsfeld, Jason Burke, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation April 11, 2003: Rumsfeld on Looting, Vandalism: ‘Stuff Happens’ The priceless Warka Vase, looted from the National Museum and later returned. Art Daily (.com) In a press briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismisses the wave of looting and vandalism throughout much of Iraq (see April 9, 2003 and After April 9, 2003) with the comment, “Stuff happens.” The looting is “part of the price” for freedom and democracy, he says, and blames “pent-up feelings” from years of oppression under the rule of Saddam Hussein. He goes on to note that the looting is not as bad as some television and newspaper reports are trying to make it out to be (see Late April-Early May, 2003 and May 20, 2003). “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,” he tells reporters. “They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.” General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is with Rumsfeld at the press briefing, agrees. “This is a transition period between war and what we hope will be a much more peaceful time,” he says. CNN describes Rumsfeld as “irritated by questions about the looting.” Rumsfeld says that the images of Iraqi citizens ransacking buildings gives “a fundamental misunderstanding” of what is happening in Iraq. “Very often the pictures are pictures of people going into the symbols of the regime, into the palaces, into the boats and into the Ba’ath Party headquarters and into the places that have been part of that repression,” he explains. “And while no one condones looting, on the other hand one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who’ve had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 4/11/2003; CNN, 4/12/2003 Accuses the Media of Exaggeration - Rumsfeld accuses the media of exaggerating the violence and unrest throughout the country: “I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn’t believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny—‘The sky is falling.’ I’ve never seen anything like it! And here is a country that’s being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they’re free. It’s just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country! Do I think those words are unrepresentative? Yes.” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 4/11/2003 “Let me say one other thing,” he adds. “The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think: ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?’” POST, 4/11/2009 'Looting, Lawlessness, and Chaos on the Streets of Iraq' - The next day, Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbiasias reports: “All day long, all over the dial, the visuals revealed looting, lawlessness, and chaos on the streets of Iraq. Nothing was off-limits, not stores, not homes, not embassies, certainly not Saddam Hussein’s palaces nor government buildings and, most disgustingly, not even hospitals.” She is “astonished” at Rumsfeld’s words, and observes that “the only free anything the Iraqis are going to get in the next little while is going to be whatever they can ‘liberate’ from electronics shops. Maybe Rumsfeld’s marketing people can come up with a slogan for that.” STAR, 4/12/2003 Archaelogists Outraged at Rumsfeld's Remarks - Historians and archaeologists around the world are outraged at Rumsfeld’s remarks. Jane Waldbaum, the president of the Archaeological Institute of America, says her agency warned the US government about possible looting as far back as January 2003. She says she is as horrified by Rumsfeld’s cavalier attitude towards the looting as she is with the looting itself. “Donald Rumsfeld in his speech basically shrugged and said: ‘Boys will be boys. What’s a little looting?’” she says. “Freedom is messy, but freedom doesn’t mean you have the freedom to commit crimes. This loss is almost immeasurable.” 4/17/2003 Failure to Protect Hospitals, Museums - Four days after Rumsfeld makes his remarks, progressive columnist John Nichols notes that had a Democratic or liberal government official made such remarks, Republicans and conservatives would be “calling for the head” of that official. Nichols notes what Rumsfeld failed to: that looters stripped hospitals, government buildings, and museums to the bare walls. He also asks why US soldiers did not stop the looting, quoting the deputy director of the Iraqi National Museum, Nabhal Amin, as saying: “The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened.” Nichols notes the irony in the selection of the Oil Ministry as the only government building afforded US protection. He concludes: “When US and allied troops took charge of the great cities of Europe during World War II, they proudly defended museums and other cultural institutions. They could have done the same in Baghdad. And they would have, had a signal come from the Pentagon. But the boss at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, who had promised to teach the Iraqi people how to live in freedom, was too busy explaining that rioting and looting are what free people are free to do.” 4/15/2003 Fired for Confronting Rumsfeld over Remark - Kenneth Adelman, a neoconservative member of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) who before the war said that the invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk” (see February 13, 2002), later confronts Rumsfeld over the “stuff happens” remark. In return, according to Adelman’s later recollection, Rumsfeld will ask him to resign from the DPB, calling him “negative.” Adelman will retort: “I am negative, Don. You’re absolutely right. I’m not negative about our friendship. But I think your decisions have been abysmal when it really counted. Start out with, you know, when you stood up there and said things—‘Stuff happens.‘… That’s your entry in Bartlett’s Quotations. The only thing people will remember about you is ‘Stuff happens.’ I mean, how could you say that? ‘This is what free people do.’ This is not what free people do. This is what barbarians do.… Do you realize what the looting did to us? It legitimized the idea that liberation comes with chaos rather than with freedom and a better life. And it demystified the potency of American forces. Plus, destroying, what, 30 percent of the infrastructure.” Adelman will recall: “I said, ‘You have 140,000 troops there, and they didn’t do jack sh_t.’ I said, ‘There was no order to stop the looting.’ And he says, ‘There was an order.’ I said, ‘Well, did you give the order?’ He says, ‘I didn’t give the order, but someone around here gave the order.’ I said, ‘Who gave the order?’ So he takes out his yellow pad of paper and he writes down—he says, ‘I’m going to tell you. I’ll get back to you and tell you.’ And I said, ‘I’d like to know who gave the order, and write down the second question on your yellow pad there. Tell me why 140,000 US troops in Iraq disobeyed the order. Write that down, too.’ And so that was not a successful conversation.” FAIR, 2/2009 Entity Tags: John Nichols, US Department of Defense, Jane Waldbaum, Richard B. Myers, Kenneth Adelman, Iraqi Oil Ministry, Nabhal Amin, Donald Rumsfeld, Antonia Zerbiasias, Iraqi National Museum Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation April 16, 2003: Rumsfeld Approves New ‘Harsh’ Interrogation Methods Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signs a memo on interrogation methods approving 24 of the 35 techniques recommended by the Pentagon working group (see April 4, 2003) earlier in the month. The new set of guidelines, to be applied to prisoners at Guantanamo and Afghanistan, is a somewhat softer version of the initial interrogation policy that Rumsfeld approved in December 2002 (see December 2, 2002). AND MALINOWSKI, 5/3/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 5/11/2004; AGE (MELBOURNE), 5/13/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 5/13/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 5/22/2004; NEWSWEEK, 5/24/2004; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/7/2004; MSNBC, 6/23/2004; TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 6/28/2004 Several of the techniques listed are ones that the US military trains Special Forces to prepare for in the event that they are captured by enemy forces (see December 2001 and July 2002). YORK TIMES, 5/13/2004 Two Classes of Methods - The list is divided into two classes: tactics that are authorized for use on all prisoners and special “enhanced measures” that require the approval of Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. The latter category of methods includes tactics that “could cause temporary physical or mental pain,” like “sensory deprivation,” “stress positions,” “dietary manipulation,” forced changes in sleep patterns, and isolated confinement. POST, 5/11/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 5/13/2004 Other techniques include “change of scenery down,” “dietary manipulation,” “environmental manipulation,” and “false flag.” The first 18 tactics listed all appear in the 1992 US Army Field Manual (FM) 34-52, with the exception of the so-called “Mutt-and-Jeff” approach, which is taken from an obsolete 1987 military field manual (1987 FM 34-52). TODAY, 6/22/2004 The approved tactics can be used in conjunction with one another, essentially allowing interrogators to “pile on” one harsh technique after another. Categories such as “Fear Up Harsh” and “Pride and Ego Down” remain undefined, allowing interrogators to interpret them as they see fit. And Rumsfeld writes that any other tactic not already approved can be used if he gives permission. Author and reporter Charlie Savage will later write, “In other words, there were no binding laws and treaties anymore—the only limit was the judgment and goodwill of executive branch officials. ” 2007, PP. 181 The use of forced nudity as a tactic is not included in the list. The working group rejected it because its members felt it might be considered inhumane treatment under international law. PRESS, 6/23/2004 Result of Discussions among Pentagon Officials - The memo, marked for declassification in 2013 (.ORG), 6/28/2004 , is the outcome, according to Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dell’Orto, of discussions between Rumsfeld, William J. Haynes, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and General Richard Myers. FILE, 6/23/2004 One US official explains: “There are very specific guidelines that are thoroughly vetted. Everyone is on board. It’s legal.” However in May 2004, it will be learned that there was in fact opposition to the new guidelines. Pentagon lawyers from the Army Judge Advocate General’s office had objected (see May 2003 and October 2003) and many officials quietly expressed concerns that they might have to answer for the policy at a later date (see (April 2003)). POST, 5/11/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 5/13/2004 Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard B. Myers, William J. Haynes, Ricardo S. Sanchez, Daniel J. Dell’Orto, Charlie Savage Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties August 2003: US, North Korea Engage in Second Round of Profitless Negotiations The US takes part in another round of multilateral negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program (see April 2003). The US has failed to destabilize the North Korean government, and the North Koreans have been unsuccessful in luring the US into bilateral talks. Instead, both sides agree to “six-way” talks that include Japan, China, Russia, and South Korea. Heavy Restrictions on US Negotiators - US chief negotiator Jim Kelly is finally permitted to meet one-on-one with his North Korean counterpart Li Gun—for only 20 minutes, and only in the presence of the other delegates. This time, Kelly is allowed to chat briefly with Li in a corner. Kelly is also forbidden from making any offers or even suggesting the possibility of direct negotiations. Kelly’s fellow negotiator, Charles Pritchard, will later recall that Kelly was told to start the chat with Li by saying: “This is not a negotiating session. This is not an official meeting.” Foreign affairs journalist Fred Kaplan will later write: “For the previous year-and-a-half, the State Department had favored a diplomatic solution to the Korea crisis while the Pentagon and key players in the Security Council opposed it. The August meeting in Beijing was Bush’s idea of a compromise—a middle path that constituted no path at all. He let Kelly talk, but didn’t let him say anything meaningful; he went to the table but put nothing on it.” But even this level of negotiation is too much for some administration hawks. During the meetings in Beijing, Undersecretary of State John Bolton gives a speech in Washington where he calls North Korea “a hellish nightmare” and Kim Jong Il “a tyrannical dictator.” Kaplan will observe, “True enough, but not the sort of invective that senior officials generally issue on the eve of a diplomatic session.” An exasperated Pritchard resigns in protest from the administration. He will later say: “My position was the State Department’s envoy for North Korean negotiations, yet we were prohibited from having negotiations. I asked myself, ‘What am I doing in government?’” Pritchard had also learned that White House and Pentagon officials did not want him involved in the talks, dismissing him as “the Clinton guy.” (Pritchard had helped successfully negotiate earlier agreements with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration.) MONTHLY, 5/2004 A Chinese diplomat says, “The American policy towards DRPK Korea—this is the main problem we are facing.” 2008, PP. 241 Cheney Source of Restrictions - According to Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the restrictions on Kelly come directly from Vice President Cheney. “A script would be drafted for Jim, what he could say and what he could not say, with points elucidated in the margins,” Wilkerson will later explain. The process involves President Bush, Cheney, Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers. On at least two occasions, Cheney rewrites the script for Kelly without consulting with the other principals, even Bush. According to Wilkerson, Cheney “put handcuffs on our negotiator, so he could say little more than ‘welcome and good-bye.’” In the words of authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Cheney’s “negotiating position was that there would be no negotiations.” AND BERNSTEIN, 2006, PP. 185-186 Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, US Department of State, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard B. Myers, Lou Dubose, Fred Kaplan, George W. Bush, Jake Bernstein, Jim Kelly, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Charles Pritchard, Clinton administration, National Security Council, John R. Bolton, Li Gun, Lawrence Wilkerson, Kim Jong Il Timeline Tags: US International Relations Late September 2003: Pentagon Sends Media Analysts on ‘Tour’ of Iraq for Propaganda Purposes Fox analyst Paul Vallely. The Intelligence Summit The Pentagon sends a group of retired military generals and other high-ranking officers—part of its team of “independent military analysts” (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) on a carefully arranged tour of Iraq (see Summer 2003). The idea is to have the analysts counter the negative images being reported from Iraq about the upsurge in violence from the burgeoning insurgency. The Pentagon also wants the analysts to present a positive spin on Iraq in time to bolster President Bush’s request to Congress for $87 billion in emergency war financing. The group includes four analysts from Fox News, the Pentagon’s go-to media outlet for promulgating its propaganda and spin, one analyst from CNN and ABC, and several prominent members of research groups whose opinion articles appear regularly in the editorial pages of the largest US newspapers. The Pentagon promises that the analysts will be given a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.” Two Very Different Views of Reality - While the situation is rapidly deteriorating for the US—the American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, later writes that the US only has “about half the number of soldiers we needed here,” and has told Bush, “We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat” at a dinner party that takes place on September 24, while the analysts are in Iraq (see September 24, 2003)—the story promoted by the analysts is starkly different. Their official presentation as constructed on a minute-by-minute basis by Pentagon officials includes a tour of a model school, visits to a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave from the early 1990s, and a tour of Babylon’s gardens. Mostly the analysts attend briefings, where one Pentagon official after another provide them with a very different picture of Iraq. In the briefings, Iraq is portrayed as crackling with political and economic energy. Iraqi security forces are improving by the day. No more US troops are needed to combat the small number of isolated, desperate groups of thugs and petty criminals that are spearheading the ineffective insurgency, which is perpetually on the verge of being eliminated. “We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaims. ABC analyst William Nash, a retired general, later calls the briefings “artificial,” and calls the tour “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to former Republican governor George Romney’s famous claim that US officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965. Yet Nash, like the other analysts, will provide the talking points the Pentagon desires to his network’s viewers. Pentagon officials worry, for a time, about whether the analysts will reveal the troubling information they learn even on such a well-groomed and micromanaged junket, including the Army’s use of packing poorly armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets, and the almost laughably poor performance of the Iraqi security forces. One Fox analyst, retired Army general Paul Vallely, later says, “I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south.” But the Pentagon has no need to worry about Vallely or any of the other analysts. “You can’t believe the progress,” Vallely tells Fox News host Alan Colmes upon his return. Vallely predicts that the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months. William Cowan, a retired Marine colonel, tells Fox host Greta Van Susteren, “We could not be more excited, more pleased.” Few speak about armor shortages or poor performances by Iraqi security forces. And all agree with retired general Carlton Shepperd’s conclusion on CNN: “I am so much against adding more troops.” 'Home Run' - The Iraq tour is viewed as what reporter David Barstow will call “a masterpiece in the management of perceptions.” Not only does it successfully promote the administration’s views on Iraq, but it helps fuel complaints that “mainstream” journalists are ignoring what administration officials and war supporters call “the good news” in Iraq. “We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official says in an e-mail to the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers and Peter Pace. The Pentagon quickly begins planning for future trips, not just to Iraq but to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay (see June 24-25, 2005) as well. These trips, and the orchestrated blitz of public relations events that follow, are strongly supported by the White House. Countering 'Increasingly Negative View' of Occupation - Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita will later explain that a “conscious decision” was made to use the analysts to counteract what Di Rita calls “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts generally have “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war; and the combination of their military expertise and their tremendous visibility make them ideal for battling what Di Rita and other Pentagon and administration see as unfairly negative coverage. On issues such as troop morale, detainee interrogations, inadequate equipment, and poorly trained Iraqi forces, Di Rita will say the analysts “were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen.” Business Opportunities - Many of the analysts are not only in Iraq to take part in the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts, but to find out about business opportunities for the firms they represent. They meet with civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many who will make decisions about how the $87 billion will be spent. The analysts gather inside information about the most pressing needs of the US military, including the acute shortage of “up-armored” Humvees, the billions needed to build new military bases, the dire shortage of translators, and the sprawling and expensive plans to train Iraqi security forces. Analysts Cowan and Sherwood are two of the analysts who have much to gain from this aspect of their tour. Cowan is the CEO of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Sherwood is the executive vice president of the firm. The company is seeking contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. The company has a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help Iraqi tribal leaders in Al-Anbar province win reconstruction contracts from the Americans. “Those sheiks wanted access to the CPA,” Cowen later recalls, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority. And he is determined to provide that access. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s people to engage these people of Al-Anbar,” he recalls. Fox military analyst Charles Nash, a retired Navy captain, works as a consultant for small companies who want to land fat defense contracts. As a military analyst, he is able to forge ties with senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met before. It is like being “embedded” with the Pentagon leadership, he will recall. He will say, “You start to recognize what’s most important to them…. There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.” An aide to the Pentagon’s chief of public relations, Brent Krueger, will recall that he and other Pentagon officials are well aware of their analysts’ use of their access as a business advantage. Krueger will say, “Of course we realized that. We weren’t naïve about that…. They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level. This has been highly honed.” (Di Rita will deny ever thinking that analysts might use their access to their business advantage, and will say that it is the analysts’ responsibility to comply with ethical standards. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he will say.) YORK TIMES, 4/20/2008 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, William Nash, wvc3 Group, Peter Pace, Wiliam Cowan, US Department of Defense, Paul Vallely, Lawrence Di Rita, Carlton Shepperd, L. Paul Bremer, David Barstow, CNN, Brent T. Krueger, Alan Colmes, ABC News, Greta Van Susteren, Coalition Provisional Authority, George W. Bush, Fox News, George Romney, Charles Nash Timeline Tags: US Military, Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda November 2003: Rumsfeld Orders High-Value Detainee to Be Kept Off Records in Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at the request of CIA Director George Tenet, orders military officials in Iraq to keep an unnamed high-value detainee being held at Camp Cropper off the records. The order is passed down to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then to Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, and finally to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq. “At each stage, lawyers reviewed the request and their bosses approved it,” the New York Times will report. “This prisoner and other ‘ghost detainees’ were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy,” the newspaper will report, citing top officials. The prisoner—in custody since July 2003—is suspected of being a senior officer of Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic group with ties to al-Qaeda. Shortly after being captured by US forces, he was deemed an “enemy combatant” and thus denied protection under the Geneva conventions. Up until this point, the prisoner has only been interrogated once. As a result of being kept off the books, the prison system looses track of the detainee who will spend the next seven months in custody. “Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him,” a senior intelligence official will tell the New York Times. “The normal review processes that would keep track of him didn’t.” YORK TIMES, 6/17/2004; REUTERS, 6/17/2004; FOX NEWS, 6/17/2004 Entity Tags: Ricardo S. Sanchez, Richard B. Myers, George J. Tenet, John P. Abizaid, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives January 15-20, 2004: Rumsfeld and Other Top US Military Officials Told of Abu Ghraib Abuse Photographs Bantz Craddock. US European Command On January 15, 2004, Lieutenant General Bantz Craddock, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant, and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, director of the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are e-mailed a summary of the Abu Ghraib abuses depicted on a CD-ROM recently given to an army investigative unit two days before (see January 13, 2004). The summary says that about ten soldiers are shown in the pictures and are involved in acts including: “Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.” On January 20, Central Command sends another e-mail to Keating, Craddock, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US Army commander in Iraq. It confirms the detainee abuse took place, is well-documented with photos, and says that “currently we have 4 confessions implicating perhaps 10 soldiers.” General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will later acknowledge in testimony that around this time, information about the abuse and the photographs had been given “to me and the Secretary Rumsfeld up through the chain of command.… And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described.” YORKER, 6/17/2007 Entity Tags: Ricardo S. Sanchez, Richard B. Myers, Bantz J. Craddock, Timothy Keating, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives February 10, 2004: Rumsfeld, Myers Claim Not to Remember 45-Minute Claim Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he cannot remember anyone making the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made the claim over six months before the US-British invasion of Iraq (see September 24, 2002). The claim was later revealed to have come from a single, anonymous, unverified source (see August 16, 2003 and December 7, 2003). Some British newspapers ran banner headlines saying that the claim meant British troops in Cyprus could be attacked with Iraqi WMD within 45 minutes. Rumsfeld tells reporters at a Pentagon briefing, “I don’t remember the statement being made, to be perfectly honest.” OF DEFENSE, 2/10/2004; BBC, 2/11/2004 General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who accompanies Rumsfeld in the press conference, adds, “I don’t remember the statement, either.” OF DEFENSE, 2/10/2004 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Mid-April 2004: Abu Ghraib Prison Photos Are Leaked to CBS A deranged Abu Ghraib detainee wanders the halls covered in human feces on December 12, 2003. MP Ivan Frederick stands behind him with a stick. Public domain The Abu Ghraib prison photos are leaked to CBS. The network informs the Pentagon that it will broadcast a story on the prison abuses and include the photos. But the network delays broadcasting the story at the request of Gen. Richard Myers. 4/30/2004; CBS NEWS, 5/6/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 5/6/2004; CNS NEWS, 5/7/2004 Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives May 6, 2004: Rumsfeld and Other Top Military Officials Seem to Be Deliberately Ignorant of Abu Ghraib Abuse Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of a hard-hitting report on Abu Ghraib prison abuse, is summoned to meet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the first time. Rumsfeld is scheduled to testify about Abu Ghraib before Congress the next day (see May 7, 2004). Also attending the meeting is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant Lt. Gen. Bantz Craddock, and others. According to Taguba, when he walks in, Rumsfeld declares in a mocking voice, “Here… comes… that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Asked if there was torture at Abu Ghraib, Taguba recalls, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.” Rumsfeld asks who leaked Taguba’s report to the public, but Taguba says he doesn’t know. Rumsfeld then complains that he has not seen a copy of his report or the Abu Ghraib abuse photographs and yet he has to testify to Congress tomorrow. Taguba is incredulous, because he sent over a dozen copies of his report to the Pentagon and Central Command headquarters, and had just spent several weeks briefing senior military leaders about it. He also was aware that Rumsfeld, Myers, Craddock, and others were notified about the abuse and the photographs back in January, before Taguba even began his investigation (see January 15-20, 2004). Taguba will later suspect that the military leaders were trying to remain ignorant of the scandal to avoid responsibility and accountability. For instance, when Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he got the reply, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?” Taguba will later complain of the meeting, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.” YORKER, 6/17/2007 Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Antonio M. Taguba, Bantz J. Craddock, Peter J. Schoomaker, Richard B. Myers, Stephen A. Cambone, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives May 7, 2004: Rumsfeld Falsely Testifies He Was Unaware of Abu Ghraib Photos and Abuses Rumsfeld under oath, testifying about Abu Ghraib. HBO In public testimony under oath before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims he had no early knowledge of the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse. He says, “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something.’ I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.” He claims that when reports about the hard-hitting Taguba report on Abu Ghraib (see February 26, 2004) first appeared publicly just days before his testimony, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” Regarding the shocking Abu Ghraib photos, seen by millions on the television program 60 Minutes on April 28 (see April 28, 2004), Rumsfeld claims, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them.” He adds that “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” Asked when he’d first heard of them, he replies, “There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th… I don’t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March.… The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and I didn’t know. And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are.” But General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will later acknowledge in testimony that just days after the photos were given to US Army investigators on January 13, information had been given “to me and the Secretary Rumsfeld up through the chain of command.… And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described” (see January 15-20, 2004). Major General Antonio M. Taguba, author of the Taguba report, will later claim that he was appalled by Rumfeld’s testimony. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them.… He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” Congressman Kendrick Meek (D) will later comment, “There was no way Rumsfeld didn’t know what was going on. He’s a guy who wants to know everything, and what he was giving us was hard to believe.” YORKER, 6/17/2007 Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Kendrick Meek, Antonio M. Taguba, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives June 17, 2004: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick and General Myers Spar over NORAD Failure During the 9/11 Commission’s twelfth public hearing, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick is sharply critical of NORAD’s failure to protect the US on 9/11. NORAD failed because it “defined out of the job,” she says. “Where was our military when it should have been defending us?” she asks General Richard Myers, who was the acting Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman on 9/11. “And the response… is that NORAD was not postured to defend us domestically unless someone was coming at us from abroad.… That’s why I come back to this word posture, we were postured against an external threat.” But, says Gorelick, the military’s own directives clearly state that NORAD has an “air sovereignty” mission that is not limited to watching the borders. “The foundation documents for NORAD, they do not say defend us only against a threat coming in from across the ocean, or across our borders. It has two missions, and one of them is control of the airspace above the domestic United States, and aerospace control is defined as providing surveillance and control of the airspace of Canada and the United States. To me that air sovereignty concept means that you have a role which, if you were postured only externally you defined out of the job.” Posse Comitatus - Gorelick also dismisses the Posse Comitatus Act of 1876, which prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity, as one of the reasons for the military’s failure. When Myers invokes the act, she quickly interrupts him. Myers says, “What we try to do is follow the law, and the law is pretty clear on Posse Comitatus and that is whether or not the military should be involved in domestic law enforcement.” Gorelick replies: “Let me just interrupt, when I was general counsel of the Defense Department, I repeatedly advised, and I believe others have advised that the Posse Comitatus says, you can’t arrest people. It doesn’t mean that the military has no authority, obligation, or ability to defend the United Sates from attacks that happen to happen in the domestic United States.” Unanswered Questions - Gorelick then pointedly asks Myers, a former NORAD commander, how the military came to neglect its air sovereignty mission: “By what process was it decided to only posture us against a foreign threat?… Is it your job, and if not whose job is it, to make current assessments of a threat, and decide whether you are positioned correctly to carry out a mission, which at least on paper NORAD had?” She adds that on several occasions, such as the 1996 Olympics (see January 20, 1997) and the G8 summit in Genoa (see July 20-22, 2001), the government had prepared for air attacks. While Myers offers a general assurance that the US military is now better prepared for “non-traditional” attacks, he does not provide specific answers to Gorelick’s questions. COMMISSION, 6/17/2004 Entity Tags: North American Aerospace Defense Command, Jamie Gorelick, Richard B. Myers, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline May 6-9, 2005: Newsweek Reports US Guard Flushed Koran Down Toilet in Guantanamo; Pentagon, White House Blame Newsweek for Lethal Riots in Report’s Aftermath Newsweek prints an item in its “Periscope” section that reports an American guard at Guantanamo Bay flushed a detainee’s Koran down a toilet. According to the report, the US Southern Command intends to mount an investigation into the desecration, which violates US and international laws. The report sparks widespread rioting in Pakistan and Afghanistan that results in the deaths of at least 17 people. The Pentagon and the Bush administration immediately blame Newsweek for the riots and the deaths; Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, the senior commander of US forces in Afghanistan, says the report did not spark the Afghan rioting, as does Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Newsweek says the information came from an American official who remains unidentified. “We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the US soldiers caught in its midst,” Mark Whitaker, Newsweek’s editor, writes in a subsequent article. Whitaker adds: “We’re not retracting anything. We don’t know what the ultimate facts are.” The Pentagon denies the report; spokesman Bryan Whitman says: “Newsweek hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations.” The report is “demonstrably false” and “irresponsible.” Whitman says the report has “had significant consequences that reverberated throughout Muslim communities around the world.” Senior Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita calls Whitaker’s note “very tepid and qualified.… They owe us all a lot more accountability than they took.” White House press secretary Scott McClellan says, “Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care.” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher says Newsweek is wrong to use “facts that have not been substantiated.” And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issues the admonishment, “People need to be careful what they say… just as people need to be careful what they do.” According to Whitaker, while the magazine tries to avoid using unnamed sources when it can, there are instances where sources will not speak to reporters unless their anonymity is guaranteed. The administration source has been reliable in the past, Whitaker says, and, moreover, the reporters of the story, Michael Isikoff and John Barry, received confirmation from both the source and a senior Pentagon official. Whitaker’s explanation notes that Newsweek has chosen not to publish previous reports of Koran desecration at Guantanamo because the sources are former detainees whom it considers unreliable. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that guards and officials at Guantanamo have looked for documentation of the reported Koran-flushing and cannot find it. YORK TIMES, 5/16/2005; RICH, 2006, PP. 164 The Pentagon will conclude that the Newsweek report is indeed responsible for the riots; Isikoff and Barry’s source for the story will back off on his original claim (see May 15, 2005). A month later, the Pentagon will confirm that at least five instances of Koran desecration at Guantanamo did indeed occur (see June 3, 2005). Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, John Barry, Hamid Karzai, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush administration, Bryan Whitman, Karl Eikenberry, Lawrence Di Rita, Mark Whitaker, Michael Isikoff, Scott McClellan, US Department of Defense, US Southern Command, Richard A. Boucher, Newsweek Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives April 2007: Military PR Officials Claim No Memory of Misleading Reporters in Story of Lynch Ambush, Rescue Rear Admiral Frank Thorp, who falsely told reporters that captured Private Jessica Lynch “fired her weapon” at her captors “until she had no more ammunition” in initial military press briefings (see April 3, 2003), discusses his misleading statements with staffers of the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the possibility that the US military used the Lynch story as propaganda (see April 24, 2007). Thorp, who was later promoted and became the chief public relations officer for then-Joint Chief Chairman Richard Myers, writes: “As I recall, this was a short interview and media desperately wanted me to confirm the story that was running in the States.… I never said that I had seen any intel or even intimated the same.… I may have said I am familiar with ‘the reports’ meaning the press reports, but as you can see I did not confirm them.… We did have reports of a battle and that a firefight had occurred.… That is what I stated.” Thorp says he does not recall ever seeing any classified battlefield intelligence reports concerning Lynch, and says he does not now remember if his remarks were based on such reports. When asked if he knew at the time that Lynch had, in fact, not gotten off a shot at her attackers, Thorp replies, “I would absolutely never, ever, ever, ever say anything that I knew to not be true.” At the time of the Lynch rescue, the chief public affairs official for CENTCOM briefings was Jim Wilkinson, the director of strategic communications for CENTCOM commander, General Tommy Franks. Wilkinson tells the committee that he was not a source for the media reporting concerning Lynch, and that he didn’t know any details of her capture and rescue: “I still, to this day, don’t know if those details are right or wrong. I just don’t know. I don’t remember seeing any operational report.” Thorp and Wilkinson claim not to know who provided such misleading information to reporters. And neither can explain why initial reports were relatively accurate (see March 23, 2003) but subsequent reports were so suddenly, and so luridly, inaccurate. & PUBLISHER, 7/14/2008 Entity Tags: James R. Wilkinson, Frank Thorp, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, US Central Command, Jessica Lynch, Thomas Franks, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda March 18, 2008: Jessica Lynch, Fellow POWs Coping with Life after Captivity US News and World Report interviews three US soldiers once held captive in the first days of the Iraq invasion: Private Jessica Lynch, Specialist Shoshana Johnson, and Private Patrick Miller. Lynch was captured and held for nine days in an Iraqi hospital before being rescued (see June 17, 2003); her story was quickly inflated by military public relations officials and eager media representatives into a fabricated tale of torture and derring-do (see April 3, 2003). Johnson and Miller received much less press coverage during their 22 days in captivity. Rear Admiral Frank Thorp, then a captain and a senior military spokesman, told reporters when Lynch was rescued that “she fired until she had no more ammunition.” That report was untrue. Thorp now says, “There was never, ever any intentional deception involving Lynch.” But the Pentagon and the news media alike were hungry for a telegenic hero, he notes. “That’s America. We want heroes, in baseball, in politics, in our day-to-day life.” NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 3/18/2008 Thorp, now a rear admiral, became the top public affairs official for then-Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers. & PUBLISHER, 7/14/2008 Lynch: Weathering the Controversy - Lynch, who has weathered years of controversy about her unwitting involvement in a Pentagon PR campaign, is not convinced that there was no deception, as Thorp insists. “They wanted to make people think that maybe this war was a good thing,” she says. “Instead, people were getting killed, and it was going downhill fast. They wanted a hero.” All three say that they were no more heroic than any of the soldiers who fight every day. “It’s nice that people remember and stuff, but the way I look at it was I was just doing my job as a soldier,” says Miller, whom Lynch has cited as displaying outstanding bravery the day of their capture. Johnson adds: “I think we tossed around the hero word a little too much. I got shot and caught, and that’s it. There are loads of soldiers out there who deserve all the props, and they don’t get enough.” Lynch, who was discharged from the Army months after her rescue (see August 22, 2003), does not watch television coverage of the war. “Honestly, it’s hard; it’s depressing,” she says. Five years after her capture, she still faces numerous physical disabilities and more surgery in the weeks and months ahead. Miller: Wants to Return to Iraq - Miller, who shot several Iraqi soldiers before being, in his words, “gang-tackled” and captured, is still in the Army, having refused a medical discharge and needing to continue his wife’s medical insurance coverage. He recalls one conversation with an Iraqi during his captivity: “There was one who asked me why I came to Iraq, and I told him that I was told to come. He was like, ‘Why didn’t you just tell them no?’ I told him that if I tell them no, I go to jail. He couldn’t understand that.” Miller, now a staff sergeant, wants to return to Iraq, though Army regulations forbid a soldier once kept as a POW from returning to the country of his capture. Johnson: Permanent Disability - Like Miller, Johnson’s captivity was relatively uneventful. She recalls one doctor in particular, “an old man with two wives and 11 children, who was really nice to me.” He protected her during her stay, even sleeping outside her door. “I don’t know if he thought somebody would come in, or something would happen to me,” she says. “When people start talking to me about Islam, that’s who I think of—a very nice man who took a big chance.” Johnson was going to write a book about her captivity, but her publishers backed out after Johnson did not give them the story they wanted. “They wanted this really religious book,” she says. “I’m a Catholic and my faith is important to me, but as a single mom with tattoos, I can’t be writing a book telling people how to live their life.” Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, she has succeeded in winning permanent disability status from the Army after a long, bitter struggle (see October 24, 2003). She is raising her 7-year old daughter, studying to be a caterer, and says that in general she is coping well. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 3/18/2008 Entity Tags: Shoshana Johnson, Jessica Lynch, Frank Thorp, Patrick Miller, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda April 2-4, 2008: Military Experts Challenge Former Justice Official’s Defense of 2003 Torture Memo Legal experts and media observers react with shock and anger at former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s defense of his March 2003 torture defense (see April 2, 2008). Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale and American University, says: “This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency. It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.” YORK TIMES, 4/2/2008 Thomas J. Romig, the Army’s judge advocate general at the time the memo was issued, says that Yoo’s memo seems to argue that there are no rules in a time of war, an argument Romig finds “downright offensive.” POST, 4/2/2008 Retired Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the memo was written, says that he never saw the document authorizing harsh military interrogations and that its narrow definition of torture is “absolutely ludicrous.” Myers adds: “I frankly don’t know anyone in the military who bought into that as a good definition of when you cross the line. In the end, you want to do the right thing. I worry most about reciprocity, how other countries will treat us.” POST, 4/4/2008 Legal experts (see April 2-6, 2008) and media observers (see April 4, 2008) join in criticizing Yoo’s rationale for the torture memo. Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Richard B. Myers, John C. Yoo, Eugene R. Fidell, Thomas J. Romig, US Department of Justice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties December 11, 2008: Senate Armed Services Committee Releases Summary of Classified Torture Report The Senate Armed Services Committee releases a classified 261-page report on the use of “harsh” or “enhanced interrogation techniques”—torture—against suspected terrorists by the US. The conclusion of the report will be released in April 2009 (see April 21, 2009). The report will become known as the “Levin Report” after committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI). Though the report itself is classified, the committee releases the executive summary to the public. Top Bush Officials Responsible for Torture - One of the report’s findings is that top Bush administration officials, and not a “few bad apples,” as many of that administration’s officials have claimed, are responsible for the use of torture against detainees in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Began Shortly after 9/11 - The report finds that US officials began preparing to use “enhanced interrogation” techniques just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and well before Justice Department memos declared such practices legal. The program used techniques practiced in a US military program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE—see December 2001), which trains US military personnel to resist questioning by foes who do not follow international bans on torture. As part of SERE training, soldiers are stripped naked, slapped, and waterboarded, among other techniques. These techniques were “reverse-engineered” and used against prisoners in US custody. Other techniques used against prisoners included “religious disgrace” and “invasion of space by a female.” At least one suspected terrorist was forced “to bark and perform dog tricks” while another was “forced to wear a dog collar and perform dog tricks” in a bid to break down their resistance. Tried to 'Prove' Links between Saddam, Al-Qaeda - Some of the torture techniques were used before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq (see March 19, 2003). Much of the torture of prisoners, the report finds, was to elicit information “proving” alleged links between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. US Army psychiatrist Major Paul Burney says of some Guantanamo Bay interrogations: “Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. We were not being successful in establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link… there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” Others did not mention such pressure, according to the report. ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 12/11/2008 ; AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 4/21/2009 (Note: Some press reports identify the quoted psychiatrist as Major Charles Burney.) NEWS, 4/21/2009 A former senior intelligence official later says: “There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used. The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack 9/11. But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq that Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi (see November 6-8, 2001) and others had told them were there.… There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder.” NEWS, 4/21/2009 Warnings of Unreliability from Outset - Almost from the outset of the torture program, military and other experts warned that such techniques were likely to provide “less reliable” intelligence results than traditional, less aggressive approaches. In July 2002, a memo from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JRPA), which oversees the SERE training program, warned that “if an interrogator produces information that resulted from the application of physical and psychological duress, the reliability and accuracy of this information is in doubt. In other words, a subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop” (see July 2002). ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 12/11/2008 ; AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 4/21/2009 Ignoring Military Objections - When Pentagon general counsel William Haynes asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve 15 of 18 recommended torture techniques for use at Guantanamo (see December 2, 2002), Haynes indicated that he had discussed the matter with three officials who agreed with him: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and General Richard Myers. Haynes only consulted one legal opinion, which senior military advisers had termed “legally insufficient” and “woefully inadequate.” Rumsfeld agreed to recommend the use of the tactics. ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 12/11/2008 Entity Tags: William J. Haynes, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard B. Myers, Paul Burney, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, US Department of Justice, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives